


Nonsense With a Side of Oranges

by hypnoshatesme



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: ??? look if you can tell me what this is you're doing better than me actually, Other, unreality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-13
Updated: 2021-01-13
Packaged: 2021-03-18 06:35:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28738863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hypnoshatesme/pseuds/hypnoshatesme
Summary: The air was sweet and warm and Gerry didn't know where he was.
Relationships: Gerard Keay/Michael | The Distortion
Comments: 14
Kudos: 35





	Nonsense With a Side of Oranges

**Author's Note:**

> I've been whining for like. a month about missing writing distortion!Michael and I have been sent prompts (thank you a lot) but my brain decided to completely disregard them and spit out whatever this is. Enjoy (?)

The air was sweet and warm and Gerry didn't know where he was. He only knew he was walking through some sort of forest, greens vibrant and rich. He knew that he couldn't remember getting here. He couldn't remember where he had been before, either, recent memory a haze, slipping away from him the more he tried to grasp it. So he stopped trying, and it felt like the right thing to do as he moved between the trees. 

He didn't know where he was going. There was no hurry in his steps. There were flowers, small and yellow and incomprehensible growing in the rays of sunlight touching the soft forest floor between the trees. But the scent in the air wasn't them and Gerry walked on, as if it mattered. The trees grew sparse and then there was a clearing and Gerry heard water and music and things looked even less right than before, if he looked closely. Not that he could, eyes slipping off any detail Gerry tried to examine, mind forgetting about it immediately, focusing on something else. 

Gerry felt a strange sense of calm here, and he wondered if it was the soft tune mixing with the gentle rustle of the leaves. He walked towards it, trying to listen more closely. There was something not quite right in the notes, they trailed off a little too long, dissolved into something not quite right, distorted. Gerry couldn’t be sure he heard right, it was too short, too vague and, overall, the music was pleasant as it mixed with the steam that had looked so distant, but was now right by Gerry’s feet as he crossed the small bridge that hadn’t been there at first. His surroundings didn’t seem to be static, sometimes looked minutely different the moment he blinked. At some point during his walk, Gerry had come to the conclusion that he was probably dreaming.

He should have been more surprised, probably, by the source of the music. But he wasn’t. Michael looked unreal, even for its standards, luminescent and frizzy at the edges as it sat, Gerry couldn’t quite tell on what, under what looked to be an orange tree. There were flowers blooming in its undulating hair, small and white and lovely, and not quite white, really, not if Gerry tried to look closely. It was playing a harp, beautifully decorated in what might be the same flowers, and might be something different altogether. It was difficult to focus on decorations with its fingers moving over strings like a nightmare, terrifying as much as it was mesmerising, difficult to look away from. 

Gerry would probably never fully get used to it, Michael’s many-knuckled fingers moving in any context, but there was something about it in this specific case, a disturbing grace in how it plucked the strings, an elegance that looked utterly impossible. Its eyes were nearly closed, which was rare, and it didn’t react when Gerry called it, or at least Gerry thought he probably imagined the slight twitch of the corner of its mouth.

Gerry didn’t know when he sat down, but he was sitting now as he watched Michael play. Neither could he remember there being oranges in the grass next to him, but there were, now, and by the time Gerry registered it, one was already in his hands. He peeled it slowly, the movement familiar, a flicker of a memory, just out of reach. Not that it mattered too much. 

Gerry felt comfortable in his dream that felt too real to be a dream and too wrong to be real. It felt like Michael, and Gerry felt safe despite knowing he shouldn’t. He ate the orange, and it tasted as it should, which surprised him. 

Michael still didn’t react when he asked if it wanted some, only kept playing in silence and Gerry leaned back, wondering about waking up without wanting to leave this dream. When the orange was gone and Gerry reached for another he was sure wasn’t there his fingers instead brushed paper. He didn't have to look, he knew it had been laying there before - or at least he thought so - and Gerry picked up his sketchbook and looked through it passively. He hadn't been able to draw much lately, feeling demotivated, but now there was a pen in his hand and he wasn't really thinking when he brought it to paper, couldn't tell if he was starting something new or continuing something old, but it was good to do this again. It was fun.

Michael didn’t acknowledge him, but it was there whenever Gerry threw a glance in its direction, flowers in its ever-moving hair, unbothered, fingers dancing over strings, incomprehensibly. There was a smile on Gerry’s lips as he sketched or doodled, or maybe he was drawing. He couldn't tell, but it felt nice.

Gerry didn't leave the place, but neither did he stay. He found himself in his bed, unable to recall waking up or falling asleep, for that matter. He tasted oranges on his tongue and there was still the faint scent of them in his nose. He turned around to find Michael right there, too close as usual, a mess of shapes and colours in its eyes that made Gerry squint. Was he getting dizzy or had he been dizzy the whole time?

There were many things Gerry wanted to ask, about his dream, about the flowers in Michael’s hair, white but not, just like in the dream. What he ended up asking was, “Why oranges?”

As usual, Michael didn’t answer. “Do you feel  _ inspired _ , pretty one?”

Gerry took a moment to try and understand. He couldn’t, so he decided to ask, “Inspired…?”

“You drew.”

Gerry frowned. “In my dream?”

Michael looked pensive for a moment. “Where’s the line?”

“What line?”

“Between dream and reality.”

Gerry groaned and rubbed his eyes. “It’s too early for this, Michael.”

It chuckled, and Gerry smiled despite it feeling like needles in his skin. Its fingers brushed his hair, gentle and static. “And yet yesterday you told me time isn’t real, sweet one.”

Gerry frowned, his memories of the day before a little hazy. They’d probably sort themselves out once Michael left, as usual. He gave up on trying for now and watched Michael’s never-quite-right face, the ever-shifting curls. Gerry reached out, plucked one of the small, white flowers from its hair and brought it to his nose. It was the same scent as his...dream and the petals felt soft and real under his fingers. 

There was a press of too sharp lips against his forehead and then Michael was gone, its absence strangely heavy. That was always the case. Michael was loud and strange and when gone Gerry felt like there was a vacuum for a moment before reality shifted back to how it was, to fill its place, erase the disturbance left by it, made by it  _ being _ . The flower between his fingers - Gerry was fairly sure, by now, that it was orange blossom - stayed, and it felt strangely heavy in all its consistent existence compared to Michael, that was neither consistent, nor did it seem to really exist most of the time. 

Gerry sighed and put the flower on the night stand as he got out of bed, slowly due the dizziness that Michael always left in its wake. He shuffled into the kitchen, his head still feeling pleasantly empty. He wouldn’t know whether he felt well rested or not until the rest of the fog had cleared from his mind, but Gerry had learned to enjoy the slower mornings after Michael stayed. 

Gerry’s sketchbook was still on the kitchen counter - still? He couldn’t remember leaving it there. He looked through it as he waited for his coffee machine, and, as expected it looked the same it had in about a month now. Gerry was too hazy to feel down about it, and then he forgot, because where the pages should have started to be white there was a nearly finished sketch of an orange. 

Gerry huffed out a laugh, half endeared, half confused. More than half confused, probably. The coffee machine was finally done, distracting him from trying to make sense of this. He took his mug, added sugar, half-expecting the page of the sketchbook to be empty again by the time he turned around. It wasn’t. Still, he was looking at an orange.

Gerry stirred his coffee thoughtfully. “Why oranges…”

There was no answer to what hadn’t really been a question this time, and neither did the sketch disappear while Gerry drank his coffee. In fact, it was still there and unchanged after he had completely finished drinking. He shrugged and decided to simply go about his day. 

Trying to make sense of the things Michael occasionally decided to do usually ended in little more than a headache. A headache, and maybe a smile tugging at the corners of his lips.


End file.
